


Broken Promises

by Asidian



Series: A Very Long Game [4]
Category: Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: Consequences, Deal with a Devil, F/M, Gen, Imprisonment, Loss of Control, Moral Bankruptcy, Temporary Character Death, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-26 19:36:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6252757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asidian/pseuds/Asidian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The darkness of the throne room held secrets that Maxwell had never wanted to learn.</p><p>It held the way muscles began to ache when they were restrained for too long in one position. The way cramps began slight and bearable, then grew. The way each inch of freedom became precious, a new position gained in an attempt to ease the pain.</p><p>Once, William Carter had been kind and considerate, however much Maxwell thought him fortune's fool.</p><p>But William and all his charity were nowhere to be found on the day They told him the most tantalizing secret of all. "You can find someone to take your place," said Their voices, sibilant and strange. "All you need is one, to sit the throne in your stead."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Promises

**Author's Note:**

> This fic follows the timeline set out in A Very Long Game, but stands alone and can be read without the rest of the series. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> EDIT: I made some pretty heavy edits as of 5.16.16. I was never really happy with how this turned out, so whole chunks have been extensively reworked. Hopefully I've made my inner peace with it.

William Carter signed on the proverbial dotted line, and like a light blooming in darkness, They gave him everything he'd ever wanted.

Fame, not just some fleeting mention, but his name in news articles and whispered on awed lips. Money, enough to buy his debt and sweep away the threat to the structural integrity of his knee caps. Stability, in the form of his own apartment in San Francisco, where the fog-laced air tasted free and sweet, and he owned all of his own furniture, and his wardrobe was filled with sleek, tailored suits.

God help him, he'd known the other shoe was bound to drop – and if all he'd had to lose was what They gave him, perhaps it would have been bearable.

But among the glittering baubles and fool's gold, he'd found something else, more important than all the rest.

He'd found something that didn't come from Them.

===

She ducked in out of the rain, her bobbed hair dripping into the collar of a trim brown pea coat, and the smile she flashed his way was wide and unapologetic.

"Jeez," she said. "Some sight I must make, showing up at an interview like I took a bath in the bay. You got a towel?"

She was effortlessly charming. Or perhaps Maxwell was just effortlessly charmed. He left her dripping there in the doorway as his mouth fell open. Her eyes were smudged around the edges, where the makeup had run, and it gave her a bruised, disheveled sort of look.

"Yes," he said, at last, when his mouth caught up with his brain. "Yes, of course."

But he stumbled and dropped the towel as he went to hand it to her, in that instant far more the man he'd once been than the one he was becoming.

She bent to retrieve it, and when she straightened up, she tipped him a wink. "Clumsy you."

And the great Maxwell stammered like a schoolboy. "Uhm," he said. "Yes, my apologies."

"No hard feelings," she said, and began to towel off her hair casually, as though she were in her own bathroom. "You got a name, mister? I'm Charlie."

===

The darkness of the throne room held secrets that Maxwell had never wanted to learn.

It held the way muscles began to ache when they were restrained for too long in one position. The way cramps began slight and bearable, then grew. The way each inch of freedom became precious, a new position gained in an attempt to ease the pain.

Once, William Carter had been kind and considerate, however much Maxwell thought him fortune's fool.

But William and all his charity were nowhere to be found on the day They told him the most tantalizing secret of all. "You can find someone to take your place," said Their voices, sibilant and strange. "All you need is one, to sit the throne in your stead."

It was a lovely thought. It wormed into his mind like ivy into old brick, the tendrils of it hooking into the soft places.

For months, he resisted it. For years – hour after hour, day after day, staring into the darkness, listening to the endless notes of a familiar ragtime tune.

He bartered with himself; he pleaded; he slipped closer and closer to an invisible ledge that he knew must be waiting.

"Just one," he said at last. Just one, to free him from this cursed throne.

===

She dragged him out onto the dance floor, delicate hands surprisingly strong. "Oh, Maxy, don't be a pushover."

A man named William Carter had hated to dance. His feet always seemed to get tangled together. He stepped on the polished fronts of shoes. He found exactly the wrong rhythm. On one memorable occasion, he'd tripped himself and gone down to one knee, and he'd thought he would never stop blushing.

But William Carter was dead and buried – and good riddance to him, Maxwell thought. He offered his assistant a charming smile and threaded his fingers into hers.

"A pushover?" he said, smooth and confident. "And disappoint a gal like you?"

He led her into the dance. It was a ragtime tune, mostly horns, with a beat that made your feet want to get moving. All Maxwell had to do was follow it. It was like gliding over the floor; his toes just seemed to know the way, and Charlie followed him, step for step, face flushed, eyes bright with pleasure.

It was the best song he'd ever heard.

===

His one stumbled through the world, clumsy and ineffective – a fragile man, all narrow limbs and silent terror.

Maxwell had chosen him for his desperation, for his eagerness to accept a bargain, and above all, for his likelihood to go unmissed. From the throne, he tracked the mime's progress, following the steps of the journey as it unfolded clue by clue.

When Wes died the first time, lost in the darkness, guilt came like a swollen wave of the ocean, sharper than a blade's edge. Maxwell lost a night in silent introspection – regretted, in elaborate detail, every choice that had brought him to this point.

But that death was not the last.

Wes froze in the harsh winds of winter, huddled near the remnants of his fire. He was struck by lightning, and set upon by frogs. He starved in a barren rock field, sucking on a scrap of bone as though it might provide the nourishment he needed.

Each time, Maxwell reformed him, set him in greener pastures, and woke him with a warning. Each time, some of the guilt slipped away.

Sometimes, a small, rational voice in his mind that sounded suspiciously like William would interject. It said, "If you keep letting him die, he'll never reach the throne. Isn't that why you wanted him in the first place?"

Ignoring that voice grew easier with every passing day.

===

Behind the thick velvet curtains, the chatter of the audience was hushed. Every once in a while, sounds would break through – a young girl's voice, excited, calling out that she wanted to see the shadow-creatures, father, please.

It was five minutes to show time, and every seat was taken.

Once, Maxwell would have been stricken with a case of nerves. His knees would have knocked and cold sweat would have trickled down his neck. When finally the curtains opened, he would have stammered and stuttered and, more likely than not, dropped the top hat from which he was meant to draw rabbits.

Now every act was a work of precision, every decoration in its finely-tuned place. His hair was slicked back and presentable. The Umbra Codex was tucked under one arm, the raw power of it thrumming through him like lightning.

Everything was perfect.

More words drifted in from the crowd, snippets of voices raised in excitement: "No, honestly. Frannie saw his show on Saturday. She swears it was real magic, cross her heart."

Charlie must have heard it, too; she glanced up and caught his eye with a grin. "Would you listen to them out there?" she said. "They're crazy for you."

Maxwell smoothed his jacket one final time. "They're just ready for the show to begin."

"Cause they're head over heels." Charlie's smile changed – grew softer around the edges. She stepped in and took hold of the lapels he'd just gotten into place. "Believe me, I oughtta know how that goes."

And she leaned up and kissed him, there behind the curtain, a gentle touch at the corner of his mouth.

===

The cracks began as hairline fractures, barely visible.

Wes lingered too long over his own skeleton, expression stricken beneath his ridiculous face paint. He lost half a day sitting in the shell of his camp, staring blankly into the flickering flames of his fire. He wept on the very first morning, upon waking, though he ought to have been full and healthy and untouched by the insanities of this world.

Hairline fractures – but with enough breaks, the limb grows crooked.

It was not such a surprise, on the day when Wes did not rise to face him, but instead stayed seated cross-legged on the ground, staring up with wary eyes.

"You'd better find something to eat before night comes," Maxwell told him.

But Wes did not. He stayed exactly where he was, unmoving, until sunset. Then Charlie took him.

A new day: a new body, fresh and unharmed. "You'll die," Maxwell told him, this time. "Without fire, what comes with the night will kill you."

Wes shook his head, and made fists of his hands, and hunched his shoulders. He did not move.

So Maxwell left him there, the refusal churning in his brain like something diseased. He had not expected to be refused. He had not expected to be _condescended_ to, here in his own world.

The words flowed to his thoughts unbidden, floating up from the dark recesses of his mind. They came from the pages of the book that had changed his life, each phrase blacker and more terrible than the last. Maxwell dreamed of coarse, dark hair and teeth the length of an index finger.

Then he spoke the spell, and the baying of hounds filled the world for the first time.

At the onset of evening, the sound of them rumbled through the air like the roll of drums. Wes' head jerked up at the unfamiliar noise – eyes wide, neck a vulnerable line. He made as though to rise, hesitated, then stumbled to his feet and broke into a shaky run.

The hounds dogged his steps, great slavering jaws and bellowing voices, snapping at him as he ran. One caught an arm and left a bleeding gash in its wake, and Wes cradled it to his chest, tears making tracks through the face paint as he stumbled.

Maxwell watched him from the throne room, tracking his progress. He watched and he waited, and he thought: this will teach him to defy a creator of worlds.

But the mime did not slow. He did not falter. He ran, breathless and staggering, straight to the edge of the world's strange, wild ocean. Then he threw himself off.

On the bank, robbed of their prey, the hounds milled about, baying senselessly. In the throne room, anger burned through Maxwell like a thick, heady incense. It made his pulse pound in his temples, and the words of magic buzz on his lips like sweetest sin.

He did not try to hold them back. He spoke them, and the magic crept out like crooked hands, creating where he willed it a floor of mottled marble and creatures of clockwork. From nothing, there sprouted a statue of himself, with charming smile and sleek, stylish jacket. In the center of it all, he placed a prison – three feet wide and three feet deep.

Wes woke in it the next morning, seated, slumped against the invisible wall. There was no room for him to lie flat.

"You're sick of dying," Maxwell drawled, casual and easy. "I get it. Don't worry, pal – we'll try something new."

===

He'd never seen that look on her face before.

Usually, there was an impish smile. Usually, there was a casual touch on his shoulder, and a quip, and a kiss. But today there was only stark worry that left her pale and strange.

"Maxy," she said to him. "You promise me. Last one, okay? Then you get rid of that thing, and we get out of here."

"I promise," he said, but when she put her arms around him, he felt that she was trembling.

===

It was mesmerizing to watch the prisoner slam his palms against an unyielding wall.

The mime's lips moved, and Maxwell could read some of the words, at least. "Please," and "S'il vous plaît," chased themselves around and around, silent and ineffective. 

But Wes had made his choices. Now he would have time to regret them – to regret the freezing rain as it soaked him to the skin, and the snow that dusted his hair every winter, and the endless, gnawing hunger that he had nothing to assuage.

Left to his own devices, the mime would have died long ago. But this forced life held a sort of fascination – a power so complete that Maxwell almost understood the pleasure They took in collecting playthings.

Perhaps it was time to add another piece to his own collection.

After all, chess was so frightfully dull with only a single pawn on the board.


End file.
